Dame Catherine Gascoigne was one of many English Benedictine nuns living in exile in Flanders in the mid-1600s. She was the abbess of Cambrai Abbey.

Dame Catherine was caught up in a dispute within the Catholic Church over the forms of prayer allowed. Somewhat in contrast to the then popular Jesuit spiritual exercises, the nuns at Cambrai Abbey practiced a contemplative form of prayer taught by Father Augustin Baker, who was himself influenced by such medieval English Christian mystics as Julian of Norwich, John Tauler, Henry Suso, and the book "The Cloud of Unknowing."

Dame Catherine and her well-known fellow nun, Dame Gertrude More, wrote defenses of Father Augistin Baker's method of prayer -- producing two deeply inspired and influential works on contemplative prayer as a pathway to mystical union with God.

The prayer-poem "One thing alone I crave" is from Dame Catherine Gascoigne's manuscript translated as "This One Thing Only", available from Stanbrook Abbey in England (bookshop@stanbrook.org.uk).